Prof. X University of Leeds THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATION. NatRep. 60 Months.

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1 European Research Council ERC Starting Grant Research proposal (Part B section 1 (B1))1 Prof. X University of Leeds THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATION NatRep 60 Months. This project aims to transform our understanding of mental and linguistic representation, its nature and significance for explanatory projects inside and outside philosophy. It seeks to show that the contemporary trend towards deflationary and non-explanatory treatments of representation is misguided, and that a naturalistic treatment of representation is available. By bringing together contemporary work in metaphysics with the lessons of the naturalizing projects of the 80s, I can make a breakthrough in the philosophical account of the mind in nature. I will shows that the key to the correct understanding of the representational relation is to develop the correct conception of the media of representation---the metaphysics of words, in the case of language; and the metaphysics of thought, in the case of mental representation. This topic is neglected, or studied only in abstraction from the metaphysics of representation. But I show that the true value of the groundbreaking approaches developed in the 80s lay in providing a satisfactory individuation of syntax---which provides a basis for resolving outstanding puzzles for interpretationist theories of semantics. This allows a synthesis of the two leading traditions in the foundations of representation. I develop the unified theory in unprecedented detail, use it to pinpoint what goes wrong in recent trends in the field, and examine its interactions with cutting edge problems in philosophy. The project will open up new approaches to the philosophy of representation, shed new light on the relation between language and thought, and develop a systematic and unified account of the nature, explanatory role, and epistemology of representation. 1 Instructions for completing Part B section 1 (B1) can be found in the Guide for Applicants for the Starting Grant 2012 Call. 1

2 2 NatRep 1(a) Scientific Leadership Potential Content and impact of early scholary contributions: case studies and overview Foundations of language Eligibility and Inscrutability showed that the approach to the foundations of language advocated by David Lewis (one of the two most influential philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century) was unsustainable. It won the Philosophical Review Young Philosophers Essay Competition in Cornell University hosted a workshop dedicated to the paper. It was published in the no 1 ranked journal in the field, Philosophical Review, alongside two commentaries by John Hawthorne (now Waynflette Professor of Metaphysics, Oxford) and Tim Bays (Notre Dame). Vagueness and Indeterminacy A theory of metaphysical indeterminacy overthrew the orthodox view that vagueness and indeterminacy must be representational phenomena. My co-author and I were runners-up in the Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Young Scholars Competition in 2009, with the paper described as exceptionally strong by the judges. This and related work is shaping the field -- for example, two recent papers in top 10 journals investigate the potential application of the techniques we develop to quantum physics. In a recent review article, my work in this area is cited in two separate contexts as the cutting edge of contemporary debates. Conditionals What would have happened had governments reacted differently in the face of the financial crisis? Such counterfactual conditionals are of vital interest, but their functioning is mysterious. My work spotlights the connections between counterfactuals and probability. I show that widespread intuitions about counterfactuals are unsustainable, and develop a corrected theory. My work has prompted extensive discussion in papers at ESF top-tier journal Synthese and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (no 5 ranked worldwide). Its influence has recently crossed over to computer science. My work has made an exceptional impact on the international field in a short space of time. It is disseminated in venues renowned for publishing original, rigorous and discipline-leading research: Seven papers in the top 5 journals worldwide: Philosophical Review (ranked no.1 worldwide in the Leiter Reports reputational journals survey, <5% acceptance rate); Journal of Philosophy (ranked no.2, 5% acceptance rate); Noûs (ranked no.3; <8% acceptance rate); Mind (ranked 4, <5% acceptance rate); Philosophy & Phenomenological Research (ranked 5, <8% acceptance rate). An average of 5 published papers a year since 2006, including an average of 3 papers a year in journals having tier 1 ESF ranking; publications in leading specialist venues in Metaphysics (Oxford Studies in Metaphysics) and Logic (Journal of Philosophical Logic, Review of Symbolic Logic); publications in collections by leading publishers OUP, CUP, Routledge and Blackwells. Leadership roles I have been Principal Investigator on grants, repeatedly securing external support, including: A UK Arts and Humanities Research council (AHRC) major research grant, early career scheme ( ). Proposal rated A+: outstanding. Major research grants have a 19% success rate. A high-prestige British Academy Research Development Award ( ). The scheme prioritizing researchers at least five years post-phd, but I was only four years post-phd. An AHRC research leave award in , The proposal was rated A+: a proposal of the highest quality and significance to the research area, to be funded as the matter of the highest priority. On completion, the project s execution was rated outstanding. I have had a leadership role in the UK learned society The Analysis Trust, which runs Analysis, one of the leading journals in world philosophy. As Secretary of the Analysis Trust between I was one of its two executive officers. My position combined the roles of secretary and treasurer, and I was responsible for the Trust s day-to-day running in a period where we had to manage a change in the journal s publisher. After my term as Secretary ended, I was invited to become a member of the Analysis committee (i.e. a trustee of the charity and a member of its decision-making and editorial board). Over the last three years I have supervised three graduate students, as well as assisting in the supervision of one during his final year, and have taken on one research student per year on average. My PhD students

3 3 NatRep have been very successful: of those who have studied for at least three years, two have secured post-doc positions and another won a prestigious Jacobsen fellowship. 1b. CV+funding ID Prof. X, PhD, BPhil, BA. Age: 33 Born: 16 January 1978, Oxford, UK Nationality: UK Academic Career Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, University of Leeds Reader in Theoretical Philosophy, University of Leeds Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Leeds PhD in Philosophy, University of St Andrews BPhil in Philosophy, University of Oxford BA in Mathematics and Philosophy, University of Oxford. Visiting positions and honorary appointments 2010 Visiting Scholar, NYU philosophy department (2 months). Funded by NYU philosophy and the Centre for Consciousness Visitor, RSSS at ANU philosophy department (1 month). Funded by RSSS and the Centre for Consciousness Associate fellow of the Northern Institute of Philosophy, University of Aberdeen Associate fellow of the Arché Research Centre, University of St Andrews Honorary research fellow of the School of Philosophical and Anthropological Studies, University of St Andrews. Grant awards Since 2007, Principal Investigator on grants totaling 268, % success rate on applications as Principal Investigator. Applications have received the highest grade on initial assessment and post-project review. International collaboration within Europe with researchers in LOGOS, Barcelona. Co-investigator on Spanish Government funded project, value E40,000 External appointments Committee member, Analysis Trust (Trustee of UK charitable trust that runs the leading international journal Analysis) Secretary, Analysis Trust (secretary and treasurer: convenes AGM, prepare accounts). General publication record. 24 high quality research publications in leading international journals and book chapters with leading academic publishers. 22 sole-authored. 3 invited book reviews or encyclopedia articles. 7 papers in the top five general philosophy journals (Philosophical Review, Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Nous, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research). 90 citations Winner, Philosophical Review Young Philosopher s Essay Competition Runner-up, Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Young Scholar Essay Competition 2009 (for joint work with Elizabeth Barnes). Research Presentations. 20 presentations at international conferences since 2005 (average 3/year), by invitation or peer review.

4 6 invited commentaries on leading researchers in the field at international conferences. 7 invited lectures at leading international Universities outside Europe. 17 invited lectures at leading international Universities within Europe. (This excludes research presentations in philosophy at the University of Leeds). Teaching and Supervision Lecturing at Masters and all undergraduate levels in philosophy. Participation in module and programme reviews. Supervision of four postgraduate and over ten undergraduate theses and dissertations. Graduate supervision: Stephan Kraemer (0.1 load; final year only, ). Now postdoc in Hamburg. Mirja Holst (0.9 load, 2009 ). Submitting Jan Offered postdoc in Hamburg; DAAD award. Alexander Oldemeier (0.9 load, 2008 ). Submitting June Jacobsen fellow Thomas Brouwer (0.5 load, 2009 ). External Graduate Examination: 2011 External PhD examiner for Alistair Wilson, University of Oxford External PhD examiner for Jacek Brzozowski, Australian National University. Editorial Board membership and reviewing Member of the editorial board, Analysis, OUP (2011-) Member of the Metaphysics editorial board, Thought, Blackwell (2011-) Member of the Metaphysics editorial board, Philosophy Compass, Blackwell (2009-) Book referee for Oxford University Press. Journal referee for: Analysis, American Philosophical Quarterly, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, British Journal for Philosophy of Science, Mind, Noûs, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Review, Philosophical Studies, Synthese, Erkenntnis, Studia Logica, Philosophers Imprint, Review of Symbolic Logic, Mind and Language Internal appointments Experience of a wide range of adminstrative posts within the University of Leeds, including director of the Centre for Metaphysics and Mind, Philosophy MA director and Joint Honours Tutor. Experience of committee work: departmental executive committee (elected junior representative); Professorship search committee; Appointments committees, twice; Curriculum working group. Organizational work includes two research workshops; research centre away day with external workshop leader; numerous seminars (with external speakers) and interdisciplinary reading groups. Funding ID: All the following have been or will be completed by projected start date PI: AHRC one-year Research Leave: Intrinsic survival, multiple survival, vague survival. 28, PI: British Academy Research Development Award: The cognitive role of indeterminacy. 106, Co-I: Spanish Government: Vagueness in Physics, Metaphysics, and Metametaphysics. 40,000 4

5 PI: AHRC Metaphysical Indeterminacy ( , 10% commitment) Intention to apply for AHRC research fellowship for monograph: Uncertainty and Indeterminacy.. 5

6 1c Early achievements track record. (2 pages). I have 24 research publications, of which 22 underwent blind peer review. I was sole author in 22 and coauthor (equal weights) in the others. 14 are in journals that are widely acknowledged as in the top 10 internationally in the discipline, and another 3 are in leading specialist journals. A further 4 were solicited by editors. The total number of citations is 90, excluding self-citations. Citation statistics are drawn from google scholar, corrected for known omissions. Publications as main author (including two with equal co-authorship). 1. Indeterminacy and normative silence Analysis (forthcoming) 2. Generalized probabilism J. Phil. Logic (forthcoming) 3. Part-intrinsic survival Noûs (forthcoming) 4. Counterfactual Triviality Phil. and Phen. Research (forthcoming) 5. Requirements on reality in Grounding and Explanation Correira and Schneider, eds. (CUP, forthcoming) (1 citation). 6. Degree supervaluational logic Review of Symbolic Logic, 2011 vol. 4: (1 citation) 7. A theory of metaphysical indeterminacy Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 2011, vol. 6. pp (Bennett and Zimmerman, eds). [co-authored with Elizabeth Barnes] (5 citations) 8. Fundamental and derivative truths Mind 2010, vol.119(473): (5 citations) 9. Defending Conditional Excluded Middle Noûs 2010, vol. 44(4): (7 citations) 10. Vagueness, conditionals & probability Erkenntnis 2009, vol. 70(2), (0 citations) 11. Vague parts & vague identity Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (2): [coauthored with Elizabeth Barnes] (0 citations) 12. Chances, counterfactuals & similarity Phil. and Phen. Research 2008, v.77(2): (10 citations) 13. Conversation and conditionals Philosophical Studies 2008, vol.138(2): (5 citations) 14. Supervaluations and logical revisionism Journal of Philosophy 2008, vol.cv(4): (8 citations) 15. Gavagai again Synthese (2): (0 citations) 16. Working parts: Reply to Mellor in Being, R. Le Poidevin (ed.) CUP, (1 citation) 17. The price of inscrutability Noûs 2008, 42(4): (1 citation) 18. Ontic vagueness & metaphysical indeterminacy Philosophy Compass vol.3, 2008: (10 citations) 19. Multiple actualities & ontically vague identity Phil. Quart. 2008, vol.58 (230): (9 citations) 20. Permutations and Foster problems Ratio 2008, vol XXI (1) (1 citation) 21. The possibility of onion worlds Australasian J. of Phil. 2007, vol. 84 (2): (4 citations) 22. Eligibility and inscrutability Philosophical Review 2007, vol 116(3): (12 citations) 23. An argument for the many Proc. of the Arist. Soc. 2006, vol. 106 (3), pp (5 citations) 24. Illusions of Gunk Philosophical Perspectives 2006, vol. 20 (1): (5 citations) Philosophical Perspectives is not peer-reviewed. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics and Proc. of the Aristotelian Society are not normally peer-reviewed, but these publications were accepted after anonymized competition. Invited Book Reviews and encyclopedia articles. Review of N.J.J. Smith Vagueness and degrees of truth Mind, forthcoming. Vagueness Routledge Comp. to the Phil. of Lang. ed. Fara & Russell, forthcoming. Positions in patterns Review of Shapiro: Thinking about mathematics TLS 21/6/2002 Invited presentations to international workshops or peer-reviewed international conferences. (Invited plenary session unless noted). 6

7 2012: Formal Epistemology Workshop, Munich; Central APA, Chicago: Panel on Probability and Accuracy (parallel session). 2011: Carolina Metaphysics Workshop, UNC; Formal Epistemology Workshop, USC (by review); 4th Vagueness Workshop and Open Future Workshop, Barcelona. Naturalness in Semantics and Metaphysics, Arché, St Andrews. 2010: Foundations of Logic, St Andrews; 2nd Vagueness Workshop, Barcelona. 2009: New Directions in Metaphysics, Nottingham. Interdisciplinary logic/philosophy joint workshop, Leeds. Fictionalism, Manchester. Pilot Vagueness Workshop, Barcelona. 2008: D Armstrong, Nottingham. Formal Epistemology Festival, Konstanz (by review). 2007: Workshop on Reference, CSMN Olso. Metaphysics of Being Basic, St Andrews. 2006: Status Belli: Arché, St Andrews. 2006: Cornell (workshop on Eligibility and Inscrutability. Replies from J. Hawthorne and T. Bays.) 2005: Origins of Reference, Barcelona (by review). Graduate sessions, Joint Sess., Man. (by review). Invited comments at international conferences and workshops: 2011: Workshop on Metaphysics, Oxford. (commentator for Kit Fine). 2010: Workshop on Vagueness, Berlin. (commentator for Stephen Schiffer). 2008: Metaphysical Mayhem, Rutgers, NJ. (commentator for Cian Dorr). 2007: Metaphysics meets physics, Rutgers, NJ. (commentator for Tim Maudlin). 2007: INPC Metametaphysics: Boise, Idaho. (commentator for Ted Sider). 2006: Being: Royal Institute of Philosophy, Leeds. (commentator for Hugh Mellor). Invited lectures at international Universities (outside UK) 2010: invited lectures at Rutgers, Maryland, NYU (all USA) 2009: invited lectures at Michigan, MIT (USA), ANU (Australia). 2007: invited lecture at Rutgers (USA) Invited lectures at international Universities (within UK) 2011: Cambridge History and Philosophy of Science. 2010: Bristol, Lancaster, London, London (interdisciplinary philosophy and linguistics). 2009: Edinburgh. 2008: Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, St Andrews (series of 3 seminars). 2007: Oxford, London. 2006: Durham, York. 2005: St Andrews Conferences organized. 2009: Metaphysical Indeterminacy: the state of the art. 2011: Metaphysical Indeterminacy II. Prizes and Awards : AHRC project award: Metaphysical indeterminacy. PI on joint project with Elizabeth Barnes and Ross Cameron. Graded 6 (highest mark) outstanding. Value: 133, : BARDA award: The cognitive role of indeterminacy. Supports two year project (one year FTE research leave). Value: 106, : Spanish Government: Vagueness in Physics, Metaphysics, and Metametaphysics. Co-Investigator on project based in LOGOS, Barcelona. Value: 40, : Runner-up, Ammonius Young Scholar Competition (for A theory of metaphysical indeterminacy, co-written with Elizabeth Barnes) : AHRC Research Leave: Intrinsic survival, multiple survival, vague survival. Proposal graded A+. Final assessment of progress: Outstanding. Value: 28, : Winner, Philosophical Review Young Philosopher s Essay Competition. 7

8 1d. Extended synopsis. This project aims to transform our understanding of mental and linguistic representation, its nature and significance for explanatory projects inside and outside philosophy. It seeks to show that the contemporary trend towards deflationary and non-explanatory treatments of representation is misguided, and that a naturalistic treatment of representation is available. By bringing together contemporary work in metaphysics with the lessons of the naturalizing projects of the 70s-80s, I can make a breakthrough in the philosophical account of the mind in nature. Mental representation --- perception and cognition --- unites humans and other animals. Linguistic representation differentiates humans from other animals. But representation in either form is a phenomenon that cries out for explanation. How does one thing---a volley of sensation, a pattern of neurons firing in the head, or a sequence of sounds or written marks--- stand for or represent another? Particular answers to this question have been argued to have dramatic consequences: to make impossible the radical disjunction between appearance and reality Plato proposed (Putnam); to render incoherent Cartesian sceptical scenarios (Davidson); and to undercut non-empirical investigations (Carnap). Thus the theory of representation occupies a pivotal strategic position. This project explores the foundations of representation. It shows that the key to the correct understanding of the representational relation is to develop the correct conception of the media of representation---the metaphysics of words, in the case of language; and the metaphysics of thought, in the case of mental representation. This topic is neglected, or studied only in abstraction from the metaphysics of representation. But I show that the true value of the causal-teleological approaches developed in the 80s lie in providing a satisfactory individuation of syntax---which provides a basis for resolving outstanding puzzles for interpretationist theories of semantics. This allows a synthesis of the two leading traditions in the foundations of representation. I develop the unified theory in unprecedented detail, use it to pinpoint what goes wrong in recent trend towards deflationism, and examine its interactions with cutting edge problems in philosophy. The project will open up new approaches to the philosophy of representation, shed new light on the relation between language and thought, and develop a systematic and unified account of the nature, explanatory role, and epistemology of representation. Objectives The project has the following principal objectives: (O1) To demarcate the explanatory role of representation. (O2) To construct a new theory of the nature of representation, including: (O2a) the metaphysics of representation---what it is for one thing to represent another (O2b) the epistemology of representation---how we can know about it. (O3) To develop a new theory of the media of representation, and demonstrate that (O2) presupposes such an enterprise. (O4) To demonstrate the implications and interaction of the philosophy of representation with a range of cutting-edge debates. Significance and Impact The project breaks new ground in the following respects. 1. The project will be the first systematic study ever undertaken of the range of interpretationist theories of meaning. Interpretationist theories (such as Dennett s, Davidson s or Lewis s) tend to be developed as individual isolated accounts, often assembled in ad hoc fashion. This investigation will transform the discussion of interpretationism by demonstrating they have a 8

9 modular structure with specific rationale and role for each component. This defines a multidimensional space of theories of representation that this project will pioneer. 2. The project will be the first systematic and unified study ever undertaken of Lewis s style of interpretationism. Lewis has enormous influence in contemporary philosophy, and his treatment of representation is often cited or presupposed without critical attention. This is problematic twice over: (a) despite its widespread influence, this account exists only in a number of scattered papers, and his treatment of key issues, such as mental representation, remains nebulous. (b) Lewis s account is untenable as it stands---as I have argued in previous work ( Eligiblity and Inscrutability Philosophical Review 2007). There is an urgent need for a detailed, systematic, and corrected treatment of these influential ideas. 3. The project will offer a unified theory of representation in two respects. First, it deals with thought and language together---so unlike many other accounts, it will not end with promissory notes or buck-passing appeal to other kinds of representational state. Second, unlike many of the naturalistic theories of the 80s, it promises a unified treatment of the grounds of representational content, rather than proceeding piecemeal e.g. by tackling only content easily connected to perceptual experience. 4. The project challenges contemporary trends by undercutting deflationary theories of meaning and representation. Deflationists maintain a modest theory built on trivialities such as Jack runs is true iff Jack runs is all our explanatory projects require. This project reinvigorate the study of substantive representation by showing that there are explanatory projects that cannot be discharged in this way. 5. The project breaks with orthodoxy (cf. Dretske, F Knowledge and the Flow of Information, MIT Press; Millikan, Ruth Language, thought, and other biological categories. MIT Press.) in viewing the teleological and indication relations at the heart of the theory of syntax---pertaining to the medium of representation---rather than semantics---representation itself. 6. My approach to the problem of linguistic representation is without precedent in modern times, in that I assign a central role to the study of the nature of the representational medium. It is often assumed that words can be identified with types of sounds or written shapes. But a richer metaphysics of words---individuating them in terms of their causal histories and the purposes for which they are introduced---is desirable in its own right and can play a central role in underpinning a theory of representation. Methodology The project has two components. The core series of work packages works systematically through the foundations of representation (addressing objectives O1-O3). Dovetailing with these, special projects draw out the significance of the core research for cutting edge research in philosophy (objective O4). The core packages run over the course of 5 years, from Month 1 of the project to Month 60. They are interspersed with special projects (described later). They are: Work Package C1: Representation and Explanation (Months 1-12) Work Package C2: Grounding Representation. (Months 17-32) Work Package C3: Representational Media. (Months 37-44) Work Package C4: Knowing what s represented (Months 49-60). The first (C1) asks: what is representation for---what explanatory work does it do? The question is asked both vis a vis mental representation (where the answer will pertain to the gathering, processing, and deployment of information about the world around us within a single individual) and vis a vis linguistic representation (where the answer will pertain to the use of language in 9

10 10 NatRep communication, and hence be essentially interpersonal). This investigation is of intrinsic interest, but it is also the vital foundation for the rest of the project, since it tells us what would count as success in providing a story of representation---one must give an account of representation that is fit to do the explanatory work. Core hypothesis: Contemporary deflationism does not provide an account of representation fit to do the explanatory work we need it to. [Vide objective O1] The second package (C2) asks: what is the nature of content---what makes it the case that a sign represents what it does? The constraint on a successful answer is that it show how to ground a notion of representation that will underpin the explanatory tasks identified in C1. An interpretationist account of linguistic content is developed and defended, and the conditions it in turn imposes on the account of mental representation articulated. By reworking the indicationtheoretic resources of earlier projects, I extend this interpretationism to underwrite mental as well as linguistic representation. This is the heart of the project, and the longest work package. Core hypothesis: Interpretationism can deliver a unified theory of representation for perception, cognition and language. But it can only do so by synthesizing the resources of the naturalistic tradition. [Vide objective O2a] The third core package (C3) asks: what is the nature of the words or concepts we use to carry representational content? The medium of linguistic representation is the familiar sounds and shaped marks on paper, and one might think that their representational properties are paradigmatically extrinsic and conventional. By contrast, the medium of mental representation seems able to offer an internal relationship between the medium of representation (e.g. red percepts) and what is represented (e.g. redness). The team will explore a novel teleological metaphysics of signs (both in language and in thought), with a potential to establish an internal relationship between representer and represented even in language. Core hypothesis: the teleological theories of meaning of the 80s went wrong by attempting a direct reduction of meaning to teleology. When reimagined as theories of the nature of syntax, they can underwrite a interpretationist foundations for content. [Vide objective O3] Every account of the metaphysics of something must explain how the proffered story fits with our ways of knowing about the phenomenon in question. The final core package (C4) asks: how do we gain knowledge of representational facts? Interpretationism is constructed to allow a smooth third personal epistemology of representation---the epistemology of the theorist of language or mind. But we are language and thought producers and consumers more often than we are third-party observers. In the case of language, the team will explore the what kind of view of first and secondperson understanding fits with the interpretationist metaphysics. In the case of cognition and perception, I examine the connection between interpretationist metaphysics and widely discussed paradoxes of first-person authority about the content of thought. Core hypothesis: Distinguish competence with content (an operational ability to think or speak) with reflective mastery (a cognitive achievement). Epistemological challenges would arise only for the latter---but no first/third personal asymmetry arises. [Vide objective O2b] The core packages thus deliver an overall account of the nature of representation: its explanatory role, the metaphysics of the medium and the content of representation, and our knowledge of it. Three special projects supplement this work, and will trace the implications and interactions of the emerging account of representation for wider philosophical concerns. [Vide objective O4]

11 Work Package S1: Full belief and partial belief. (Months 13-16). Work Package S2: Norms of representation. (Months 33-36). Work Package S3: Phenomenal character and representation (Months 45-48). (S1) Full belief and partial belief. This special project examines the debate between those who think the principle form of mental representation is in partial beliefs (confidence-levels) and those who think explanatory priority should be given to what is all-out believed. Project hypothesis: Partial beliefs have explanatory priority, but all-out beliefs are also required for boundedly rational agents like us, so an adequate account of mental representation must accommodate both. (S2) Norms of representation. Some maintain that naturalistic accounts of representation must be wrong in principle because they cannot account for the normativity of meaning. This special project examines the idea of correct and rational belief or assertion. It draws on recent work in metaethics on the connection between reasons and rationality. Project hypothesis: a naturalistic account of representation is no obstacle to an adequate theory of norms of representation. (S3). Phenomenal character and intentionality. On one view, the medium of mental representation should be located in physical items---in patterns of neuronal firing. But an alternative is that the vehicle of perceptual representation, at least, are mental items the phenomenal character of our visual field. Conversely, some argue that phenomenal character should be reduced to mental representation, rather than presupposed in theorizing about it. This special project examines the interaction between these debates and the emerging theory of the nature of representation developed in the core packages. Project hypothesis: phenomenal character is a vehicle of perceptual content, so the reduction of phenomenal character to representational content must fail. The research team The PI will devote 65% of his time to the project. His main responsibility will be with the overall running of the project and its intellectual direction, and the coordination of activities associated with the special projects (O1-O4). Two postdoctoral researchers will be part of the project for the entire period (a total of 60 months). One will have expertise in the philosophy of perception and mind, and the other will have expertise in the philosophy of language. Each of the core projects divides into two halves, one each in these respective areas, and the postdoctoral researchers will coordinate activities associated with their respective areas of expertise, under the supervision of the PI. Two PhD students will be part of the project in months 12 through 48. PhD dissertations are an ideal opportunity to systematically survey the state of the art in a level of detail that academic papers and monographs must abstract from, and will be a vital input to the project. The project itself provides the ideal environment to build such a foundation, and connect it to cutting edge research. One will work on the foundations of mental content, the other on the foundations of linguistic content. 11

12 Organization of research Each year there will be 25 project seminars. 10 of these will run on a weekly basis during full semester. 5 will be run during the summer. They will be 1.5 hours, and will take one of two forms: (a) a pre-read format, covering classics in the field, cutting edge research, or work in progress by the project team; or (b) a visiting speaker. There will be four workshops each year. Two will feature external speakers and commentators. One will be an internal work in progress session which will be the focal point for each member of the research team to present polished drafts of their research. A final session will be built around webcast presentations by a selection of world experts. (a) External pilot workshop (September). (b) Internal work in progress (January). (c) E-conference (March) (d) External special project (June). Dissemination The PI will write a monograph, provisionally entitled The Nature of Representation. The PI and the other researchers will write a large number of scientific articles. The PI has an excellent publication record and will assist and encourage the team members to achieve this. The research team will also produce an edited conference volume based on the international conferences to be organized. The PI and other team members will present their research at appropriate international conferences and workshops. An international conference will be organized, which will allow for sharing of ideas and results, and provide feedback on work in progress. 12

13 a. State of the art and objectives. ERC Starting Grant Research proposal (Part B section 2 (B2)) Overview This project aims to transform our understanding of mental and linguistic representation, its nature and significance for explanatory projects inside and outside philosophy. It seeks to show that the contemporary trend towards deflationary and non-explanatory treatments of representation is misguided, and that a naturalistic treatment of representation is available. By bringing together contemporary work in metaphysics with the lessons of the naturalizing projects of the 80s, I can make a breakthrough in the philosophical account of the mind in nature. The project has the following principal objectives: (O1) To demarcate the explanatory role of representation. (O2) To construct a new theory of the nature of representation, including: (O2a) the metaphysics of representation---what it is for one thing to represent another; (O2b) the epistemology of representation---how we can know about it. (O3) To develop a new theory of the media of representation, and demonstrate that (O2) presupposes such an enterprise. (O4) To demonstrate the implications and interaction of the philosophy of representation with a range of cutting-edge debates. The project will open up new approaches to the philosophy of representation, shed new light on the relation between language and thought, and develop a systematic and unified account of the nature, explanatory role, and epistemology of representation. Background Structuring much of philosophy is the contrast between Appearance: the way that we represent the world around us; and Reality: the way the world is in itself. For example. In perception, a stick immersed in water appears bent when really it is straight. In belief, it may seem that one s economy is stable, when really a crisis is imminent. In language, someone may assure us that Toby is wise, when really he is foolish. In each case, we have a contrast between the way things are represented to be and the way they really are. A great deal of our interaction with the world is explained by representations, rather than reality directly. Our investments reflect how we think the economy will perform, not the reality. In turn, the way we form those beliefs is responsive to representations in perception and linguistic communication. This explanatory role for representation received a precise articulation following the cognitive revolution initiated by Chomsky (1959). Philosophers and psychologists moved towards explaining behaviour by means of internal representational mental states with a language-like structure. To account for the mind s place in nature, it seemed, one had to find a place for the representational properties of such states. At first, there was widespread optimism that this could be achieved: two landmark achievments were Dretske s information-theoretic analysis of indication relations (1981) and Millikan s association of primitive representation with the natural teleology (grounded in evolutionary selection) of biological organisms (1984). 13

14 But the accounts were not easily generalized, and left core questions unanswered. A second tradition arose, one that accepted the cognitive explanation of behaviour in terms of internal mental states, but denied the explanatory relevance of any representational properties such states might have. The alleged redundancy of representation paved the way for present-day deflationism, which held that there is no scientific need to posit substantial representation relations, and that we should concentrate instead on exploring the expressive usefulness of talking in terms of representation notions such as truth and reference. One important aspect for the present project was the attention paid in this tradition to considerations of the individuation of (mental) syntax, as a potential explanatory resource----something given very scant attention elsewhere (cf. Stich 1991). The final element of this backdrop are interpretationist theories. Associated in particular with Donald Davidson (e.g. 1974), instead of appealing to resources---such as causal indication and biological function---recognisably continuous with that used by natural sciences, the interpretationists characteristically appealed to considerations that would lead an agent to attribute a certain meaning to anothers words. Interpretationism has considerable strengths---it promises a general rather than piecemeal approach to meaning; it promises to deal with representation both in thought and language; it dovetailed with compositional theories of meaning developed in linguistics. In Davidson s hands, however, it was associated with a rich but cluttered landscape of claims---about the interaction between epistemology and metaphysics of meaning; about the putative need for language for belief; about the perspective-relativity of interpretation. One variant of this approach is particularly influential at the moment. On the basis of his groundbreaking game-theoretic treatment of signalling conventions (1969), David Lewis developed an account of language in the interpretationist spirit (1975). The position he sketched out over several papers promised to retain many of the desirable features of Davidson s account while dispensing with the more problematic ones. But the theory as a whole was never set out systematically (e.g. his foundational treatment of belief in (1974,1994) remains frustratingly nebulous). I have argued in previous work (2007) that what Lewis does say suffers serious problems and is untenable as it stands. This view of the contemporary scene may seem depressing. Extant theories are underdeveloped, have foundered on well-known problems, or are burdened with tendentious associations. Deflationism---perhaps the most active recent position---recommends we simply give up on explanatory notions of representation. However, this project is based on the optimistic view that the time is ripe for a revival of systematic theorizing about the foundations of representation. Indeed, the required materials are already ready to hand---but the elements stand in urgent need of redevelopment, generalization and in some cases, complete reimagining. How the objectives will be achieved. The proposed project consists of four core work package (C1-C4) interspersed with three special projects (S1-S3). C1: The explanatory role of representation (12 months: months 1-12). What is representation for---what explanatory work does it do? If representational states (believing that such-and-such, desiring that so-and-so) and facts (this sentence meaning p; that name referring to x) are indispensable to explaining what goes on in the world around us, then any naturalistic account of the world must locate representation within it. If, as deflationists have suggested (e.g. Field 1994), representational notions have only an expressive function---allowing us to formulate in a short and efficient way explanations that could in principle be given without mention of any representational vocabulary---then the urgency of theorizing about representation would diminish. 14

15 Getting clear on the explanatory function of representation is not only at the heart of the dialectic between deflationary and inflationary treatments of representation. It also shapes that debate itself. For it sets success-conditions for a treatment of representation. If one proposes a theory of representation with surprising or counterintuitive consequences, the question arises about whether it is acceptable to bite bullets and follow the theory where it leads; or whether instead one must treat the theory as refuted. Having a background conception of the explanatory role that the theorized notion is to play can cut through the familiar stalemate of counterexample trading. For the given a proposed revisionary theory, we may ask: does this do the job that made us interested in developing such a theory in the first place? If the answer is no, then no matter what horsetrading over intuitions we carry out, the theory is not a success. If the answer is yes, then the theory passes a crucial test, and the burden is on opponents to explain what remains of significance to debate. Linguistic and mental representation clearly feature in different kinds of explanations. Mental representations are prima facie involved in psychological explanations---the functional interrelation of different mental states, and in particular in the practical reasoning that lies behind intentional behaviour (cf. e.g. Fodor 1987). Beliefs and desires, in particular, are directly cited to explain why a certain physical happening---the movement of my arm that constitutes my waving at a friend--- occurred. The two major questions are therefore: (1) whether (content-invoking) belief-desire explanations of this form are required to explain behaviour; (2) whether other contentful states are similarly required---in particular, states with contents of other types (e.g. the objectual desire for water, or objectual fear of the blob). If only propositional attitudes have a genuine explanatory role, that opens up space for a split theory of representation that gives a substantive treatment of propositional content, but a more deflationary take on subpropositional content. Linguistic representations have a rather different kind of explanatory role. Their primary use seems to be in speech acts whereby we communicate with each other (and ourselves over time). Thus we command, interrogate, assert and so forth. To compare and contrast with mental representation: (1) The primary consequences of a speech act qua speech act, are on mental states of observers. A successful assertion may update the common ground of a conversation---what is taken for granted by participants. But it issues in real world consequences only indirectly, in the actions of those whose beliefs it influences. In the words of Wright (1992), it has only a narrow cosmological role. (2) The paradigmatic speech acts---assertion, commands, questions---paradigmatically take sentential complements ( only a sentence is a move in the language game ). As with mental representation, the question arises whether subsentential content has any comparable explanatory role in communication---certainly we sometimes manage to communicate by vocalizing just a single word (e.g. indicating where someone is to sit by pointing to a chair and uttering their name), but it is neither clear whether this should count as a subsentential utterance, rather than a sentence part of whose syntax is ellided; nor whether the speech act thus performed is subpropositional. It is notable, however, that Heim s file-change setting for modelling communicative update (1982) makes essential use of extra structure (paradigmatically, information about a particular object carried in that objects file ). S1: Full and partial belief (4 months, Months 13-16). When considering the putative role for belief in explaining behaviour, questions about the very form of that account are raised. In particular, familiar models of action-explanation, influential in philosophy of science and formal epistemology, and widespread in the social sciences, cite partial beliefs or subjective probabilities as doxastic states suitable to inform action. But commonsense tends to attribute all-or-nothing beliefs to people. This matters for the foundations of representation: on-or-off full belief states might counterfactually vary with the obtaining or non-obtaining of a particular state of the world. But it is hard to immediately adapt this theory to a partial beliefs. This special project, therefore, looks at recent debates on the relation between full belief and partial belief, with the view to establishing a target for the foundational theories of doxastic representation. 15

16 16 NatRep The leading hypothesis (based on recent suggestions by Schroeder and Ross) is that partial belief has the principal explanatory role, but that full beliefs are a device required by bounded agents to frame decision problems in a computationally tractable way. This view gives both full and partial beliefs explanatory roles, and the intentionality of each must be grounded. This opens new options for the foundations of representation however: for example, it might be that full beliefs are the principle locus for content determination, even though partial beliefs ( written in the same script ) bear the primary load in explaining action. C2: Grounding Representation (16 months, Months 17-32). What is the nature of content---what makes it the case that a sign represents what it does? The constraint I impose on on a successful answer is that it show how to ground a notion of representation that will underpin the explanatory tasks identified in C1. Again, linguistic and mental content pose separable challenges. There are two main strategies: (a) the headfirst approach of grounding mental content independently of language, enabling the appeal to beliefs, etc, as part of an account of the representational content of language (cf. Lewis 1994); (b) an account on which linguistic content is grounded first or interdependently with mental content (cf. Davidson 1974). I take it to be a desiderata that our account of mental content is to generalize to cover the doxastic states of non-human animals, and hence I will focus on (a). Accordingly, I will first consider the grounds of mental content, and then move on to consider how the resources thus secured be redeployed, or put at the service, of an account of the content of natural language. The focus in both cases will be on varieties of interpretationism as the foundational story of linguistic content. On mental content, I will consider whether an interpretationist account of mental content independent of linguistic content is in principle available. In the first instance, I presuppose a background language of thought. The typical pattern of such accounts involves identifying an association between sentences and semantic values, and then selecting an overall interpretation of language as one that best fits with this pairing. So the initial question is what sort of story can be plausibly put forward to select the pairing of mentalese sentences with semantic values; clearly certain familiar interpretationist devices (e.g. Lewisian public conventions) cannot be so adapted. I consider two proposals. The first appeals to a pairing of sentences with truth and/or falsity, according to whether there is a stable disposition to believe-true or believe-false the sentences (this latter sentential attitude is to be understood in functional terms---it is for the sentence to be tokened in the belief box ). This provides the raw materials for a kind of foundational theory of content known as global descriptivism, one of the simpler and most studied versions of interpretationism (cf. Lewis 1984). The kind of view runs considerable danger of underdetermining representational content, and the weight of resisting problematic extreme indeterminacy is likely to be taken up by the account of conditions under which an interpretation is selected by target data (discussed below). I will consider recent suggestions by Timothy Williamson (2007) that by epistemicising interpretation, so that knowledge rather than truth-maximization is the target, one can finesse wellknown worries. I will consider also the partial belief setting. The second approach attempts to establish a richer range of data. It looks, in particular, at the teleological and indication approaches to semantics. Rather than a direct reduction of semantics, on this conception they would pair sentences with possible states of the world (propositions) which are then the raw data for a general interpretationist treatment of the semantic significance of the vocabulary of the language of thought. There are several issues with such an account: (i) it may inherit some well-known limitations of the teleo-indicator approaches, such as the underdetermination of the the function of a particular neurological process (teleological) and difficulties with the treatment of misrepresentation (indication); (ii) it is most plausibly applied to a limited range of recognition sentences involved in perception rather than all mental content.